The present invention relates to an information processing system having a synchronous control mechanism among plural information processing devices.
With the recent development of an information society, there have been increased opportunities of handling a large amount of electronic data. Further, server devices and storage devices capable of handling a large amount of electronic data are essential for the growth of companies. In particular, there are many cases where the processing capacities of server devices need to be extended. As extension means of operation capacities in conventional server devices, there are two methods called “scale-out” and “scale-up”.
For example, in a system in which a processor, a memory, a chipset, an I/O controller, and a storage device (HDD and SSD) are integrated into one information processing device module as represented by an information processing device called “blade server” among the types of server devices, the scale-out method is a method in which the processing capacity of the entire system is extended by newly adding an information processing device module. This method is particularly effective in the case where a dependency relationship of data processed in each information processing device module is weak. However, in the case where the dependency relationship of data is strong, it is difficult to extend the operation capacities by the scale-out method.
On the other hand, as represented by a large-scale SMP (Symmetric Multi Processing) configuration, the scale-up method is a method in which the capacities of a processor and a memory of an existing information processing device are improved by addition or replacement, so that the processing capacity of the entire system is extended. This method is effective in the case where a large amount of data that is strong in the mutual dependency relationship is processed. However, it is necessary to preliminarily estimate the processing capacity that would be needed in the future in detail at the time of introducing the information processing device. In addition, the scale-up method is inferior to the scale-out method in costs such as the excessive cost at the time of introduction and the cost at the time of extending the system after the introduction.
In order to address the problems, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2010-009628 describes a technique of connecting two or more server modules that are information processing device modules by SMP connection in a blade server device, and the scale-up method as well as the scale-out method that is a conventional extension method of a blade server device can be realized.
Further, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2010-079467 realizes the simplification of backplane wirings and a low cost at the time of introducing a server device by using an SMP connection method via an SMP connection device that can be directly attached or detached to/from the server module, instead of an SMP connection method via a substrate called “backplane” on which server modules are aggregated.